Two Sides of a Slice, and the Teacher Said Nothing

The school at Catagnana, above Barga in the hills of Tuscany, was so new in 1964 that it got its sign after it got its pupils. When it went up, a six-year-old read it out to the class, with total confidence, as Elephant School. Everyone laughed, the teacher included. She is in her sixties now and remembers the laugh exactly.

It was a pluriclasse: one teacher, several year groups, one room. The older children helped the younger ones. The teacher made pudding on the wood stove in winter and read them stories while it set. She lost her temper only over pages rubbed out so hard they had holes in them, which is a policy I would like to adopt and cannot, because in our house that would be every page.

Then jars of chocolate spread arrived, a gift, and the instruction went home: bring a slice of bread, the teacher will do the rest.

Our six-year-old had a problem. Her mother had not heard about the chocolate and had sent her off with the usual slice: home-baked, with olive oil and sugar on it. A perfectly good slice. On any other day, an excellent slice. On chocolate day, a slice that was already taken.

So she turned it over.

A slice of bread has two sides, and she had just found out what the second one was for. She held out the plain side. The teacher spread chocolate on it, looked at the underside, looked at the girl, and said nothing. The girl ate oil, sugar and chocolate together, and nobody mentioned it then or afterwards.

I have never once in my parenting life said nothing. When the youngest arrived at a birthday party in Madrid with a present still bearing its price label, and the label said €3.99, and the present was clearly a mug, I said several things, quietly, in the hallway, which the youngest repeated loudly in the garden to the birthday child’s mother.

The Catagnana teacher had noticed the bread itself, too. She asked the girl’s mother whether she might buy a loaf when she baked. They settled on two hundred lire, which a six-year-old remembered as an enormous sum. On baking days a loaf went down to the school.

So the teacher spotted a forbidden slice, kept quiet about it, and then quietly bought the bakery. I would like that level of strategic silence.

Instead, last week, the youngest presented her own plan to beat the rule against sweets in lunchboxes: a biscuit hidden inside a sandwich. She showed me, proudly, in advance, so that I could admire it. I said nothing. Then I said quite a lot. Then she ate the biscuit in the kitchen in front of me, which settled the matter.